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Winnie-the-Pooh
Winnie-the-Pooh, also called Pooh Bear, is a fictional anthropomorphic teddy bear created by English author A. A. Milne. The first collection of stories about the character was the book Winnie-the-Pooh (1926), and this was followed by The House at Pooh Corner (1928). Milne also included a poem about the bear in the children's verse book When We Were Very Young (1924) and many more in Now We Are Six (1927). All four volumes were illustrated by E. H. Shepard. The Pooh stories have been translated into many languages, including Alexander Lenard's Latin translation, Winnie ille Pu, which was first published in 1958, and, in 1960, became the only Latin book ever to have been featured on The New York Times Best Seller list.1 Hyphens in the character's name were dropped by Disney when the company adapted the Pooh stories into a series of features that became one of its most successful franchises. In popular film adaptations, Pooh Bear has been voiced by actors Sterling Holloway, Hal Smith, and Jim Cummings in English, and Yevgeny Leonov in Russian. Legacy A plaque on Winnie-the-Pooh Street (ulica Kubusia Puchatka) in Warsaw Winnie the Pooh has inspired multiple texts to explain complex philosophical ideas. Benjamin Hoff used Milne's characters in The Tao of Pooh and The Te of Piglet to explain Taoism. Similarly, Frederick Crews wrote essays about the Pooh books in abstruse academic jargon in The Pooh Perplex and Postmodern Pooh to satirise a range of philosophical approaches.44 Pooh and the Philosophers by John T. Williams uses Winnie the Pooh as a backdrop to illustrate the works of philosophers including Descartes, Kant, Plato, and Nietzsche.45 Epic Pooh is a 1978 essay by Michael Moorcock that compares much fantasy writing to AA Milne's as work intended to comfort, not challenge. One of the best known characters in British children's literature, a 2011 poll saw Winnie the Pooh voted onto the list of icons of England.46 Forbes magazine ranked Pooh the most valuable fictional character in 2002, with merchandising products alone generating more than $5.9 billion that year.47 In 2005, Pooh generated $6 billion, a figure surpassed by only Mickey Mouse.48 In 2006, Pooh received a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, marking the 80th birthday of Milne's creation.48 The bear is such a popular character in Poland that a Warsaw street is named for him, Ulica Kubusia Puchatka. There is also a street named after him in Budapest(Micimackó utca).49 In music, Kenny Loggins wrote the song "House at Pooh Corner", which was originally recorded by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.50 Loggins later rewrote the song as "Return to Pooh Corner", featuring on the album of the same name in 1991. In Italy, a pop band took their name from Winnie, and were titled Pooh. In Estonia there is a punk/metal band called Winny Puhh. In the "sport" of Poohsticks, competitors drop sticks into a stream from a bridge and then wait to see whose stick will cross the finish line first. Though it began as a game played by Pooh and his friends in the book The House at Pooh Corner and later in the films, it has crossed over into the real world: a World Championship Poohsticks race takes place in Oxfordshire each year. Ashdown Forest in England where the Pooh stories are set is a popular tourist attraction, and includes the wooden Pooh Bridge where Pooh and Piglet invented Poohsticks.51 The Oxford University Winnie the Pooh Society was founded by undergraduates in 1982. In the People's Republic of China, images of Pooh were censored in mid-2017 from social media websites, when internet memes comparing Chinese president Xi Jinping to Pooh became popular.